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Friday, 10 July 2015

Caspar Bowden

Privacy expert and activist Caspar Bowden died recently. There's been a real sense of shock and sadness amongst the privacy, data protection, digital rights communities that I'm connected to. I didn't know Caspar as well as others (there are some very fitting tributes) but I liked and respected him and his work.

I first met Caspar in the context of a Identity in the Information Society (IDIS) project workshop in Rome, where we ended up sitting next to each other at dinner. We spoke about the UK ID cards debate, which I'd been writing about for my PhD, but Caspar had been much more actively involved with. His insight on why particular UK news papers had adopted the various stances they did in the issue ran entirely against the grain of how I was thinking about fairly depersonalised, institutional "discourse". Since then, we've spoken in the context of other conferences and workshops and on twitter. He's on that short mental list that hovers in the back of your mind as you write acting as a quality check - "will Caspar think I'm an idiot if I write this?". I also always enjoyed it when Caspar asked a question at a conference (maybe because I wasn't ever on the receiving end).

David Barnard-Wills

Biography

Political Scientist and Senior Research Analyst at Trilateral Research

I have been researching the politics of surveillance for few years now. my PhD thesis on the 'Articulation of Identity in UK discourses of Surveillance' was submitted to the University of Nottingham, and I graduated in March 2009.

As a postdoc Research Fellow I previously worked at Cranfield University in the Department of Informatics and Systems Engineering and The Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham.

My current research includes issues of privacy and consent online, as well as continuing to research surveillance,identity, political theory, and the political and social impacts of information technology. I have also done some work on terrorism, counter-terrorism and international security.

I Changed my surname from Wills to Barnard-Wills when I got married in 2009. David Wills is a younger me.

Publications

D.Barnard-Wills, P.De Hert & C.Pulvi, ""Data Protection authority perspectives on the impact of data protection reform on cooperation in the EU" Computer Law and Security Review

R. Rodrigues, D. Barnard-Wills, P. De Hert & V. Papakonstantinou, The future of privacy certification in Europe: An exploration of options under Article 39 of the GDPR, International Review of Law, Computers and Technology

David Barnard-Wills (2015) 'Surveillance' in International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, Wiley-Blackwell/ICA

Articulations of Identity in UK discourses of surveillance InVisibilities: The Politics, Practice and Experience of Surveillance in Everyday Life. University of Sheffield April 2008

Facebook as a Political Weapon: The useful explicit and implicit information contained in social networking sites. Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0. University of York. 5/09/2007 Paper written with S. Reeves, School of Computer Science, The University of Nottingham

The Surveillance Society: A Governmental Response to Globalisation and the Contingency of Identity. Globalisation in the 21st Century. The University of Leicester. 26/06/2007

Failed Strategies in the Discourse of Anti-Surveillance social movements Ninth Annual Graduate Conference in Political Theory, The University of Warwick. 17/02/07